Until Proven Guilty - J. A. Jance [46]
“Thanks,” I said. “That was good thinking.”
“Where is he now?” Peters asked.
The Volvo stopped across the street. I went back to an officer who was standing near the front door. “Don’t let that yahoo in here,” I said, pointing at Cole, who was just climbing out of the car.
The dining room at the Warwick is small and intimate. At that hour of the morning it was just filling up with tables of visiting businessmen and conventioneers. Andrew Carstogi had been placed at a small corner table. The hostess watched him nervously from her desk. Peters pulled his gun and put it in his jacket pocket. We approached the table warily.
Carstogi looked up and saw us coming toward him. He grinned and waved at us with an empty fork. “Hi, guys,” he said.
“Where have you been?” Peters asked.
Carstogi’s grin faded. “Out. Just got back. They told me there’s a problem with the room and they’re buying me breakfast while they fix it. Good deal.”
“Out to where?” Peters continued.
“What is this?” Carstogi asked. “I went to a movie, and I met a girl. There’s nothing the matter with that.”
“What’s her name?” I put in. “Where did you take her?”
“We went to her place. Jesus, how am I supposed to know where it is? What’s going on? Why all the questions?”
“How did you get back here?”
“I caught a cab.”
“Which one?”
Carstogi stood up. “Okay, I’m not saying another word until you tell me what’s going on.”
People around us were staring. We were creating a disturbance. “Sit,” Peters hissed. We sat.
“We have two brand-new murders,” Peters said. “Two homicides at Faith Tabernacle.”
The color drained from Andrew Carstogi’s face. “Not Suzanne,” he whispered.
I nodded. “Suzanne and Brodie both. Sometime during the night. Now tell us, how’d you get back here from wherever you were.”
Carstogi opened his mouth to say something and then shut it. Two gigantic tears rolled down his face. He brushed them away with his sleeve. “I caught a cab,” he said.
“What kind? Yellow? Graytop?”
“I don’t know. Just a cab. It picked me up at her house. I think it was the same cab as last night, but I’m not sure.” He looked back and forth from one of us to the other. “It’s not true, is it? Tell me it’s not true.”
“It’s true,” I said.
“Do you mind if we go through your room?” Peters asked.
Carstogi shook his head mutely. Peters signaled to an officer who had stationed himself next to the hostess’s desk. “Have the desk clerk let you into his room to check it out,” he instructed. “Let me know if you find anything.” The officer hurried away. Carstogi’s shoulders heaved with noisy sobs. Peters and I watched, saying nothing. Eventually, he regained control.
“Am I under arrest?” he asked.
“No, but as of now I’m afraid you’re the sole suspect.”
“But I never went near the church after we left there yesterday. I wouldn’t know how to get there.”
The officer returned to say that the room was clean. Carstogi looked from one of us to the other. “What’s going to happen?” he asked.
I pushed back my chair. “Let’s go up to your room and get a statement from you. Do you want an attorney present?”
“I don’t need one,” he said. “I didn’t do it.”
I believed him. I just wished that things were always that simple. We led him upstairs and took his statement. Carstogi answered all our questions willingly enough. According to him he had gone to a porno house and had been picked up by a prostitute after the movie.
I don’t think Carstogi really grasped that the only thing between him and a first-degree murder charge was a prostitute whose name was Gloria, most assuredly not the name her mommy gave her. He couldn’t remember her address, and the description he gave us would have fit half the females in the U.S. Average height, kind of light brown hair, lightish eyes, slim. Carstogi’s life was hanging by a slender thread.